Trump Exhausting All The Other Options
Personal, transactional approach predictably fails to achieve world peace
Senior Trump administration officials tell Reuters the White House is “increasingly frustrated” with Vladimir Putin and has “grown wary” of his intentions. Donald Trump did his best to woo Putin with proffers of sanctions relief and normalized relations, but his 30-day ceasefire for Easter was rejected anyway. Now his team “are drawing up new plans to pressure both Kyiv and Moscow” towards peace.
Trump criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for not accepting his gracious offer of a one-sided rare earth minerals deal in which Ukraine agrees to pay back money it never owed. As I keep reminding readers, this “minerals deal” was always Zelenskyy’s idea, not Trump’s, and if it ever does come to pass it will serve the ends of the Ukrainians, not Trump.
If Trump has not softened towards Ukraine yet, this week there has still been “a shift in the administration's internal deliberations about Moscow's willingness to negotiate” actual peace, Reuters says. Putin appeared to agree to Trump’s ceasefire, violated it instantly, ordered up 160,000 new conscripts, and now pretends he never agreed to anything. Trump wanted a brand-level transaction with Russia, the glory of a Moscow visit, and a Nobel peace prize. It all turned out to be much harder than he imagined.
“In a series of meetings and calls over the weekend, officials inside the White House and State Department acknowledged that Russian President Vladimir Putin is actively resisting Washington’s attempts to strike a lasting peace accord and discussed what, if any, economic or diplomatic punishments could push Russia closer to a deal,” according to Reuters.
The efficacy of secondary oil tariffs, which would raise the prices of goods in America that come from countries which buy Russian oil, are debateable. It would be much more effective to just take part in Canada’s initiative to sanction the ‘dark fleet’ transporting Russian oil to other countries, but Trump has revealed a quasi-religious faith in the power of tariffs to solve All The Problems.
Yesterday he even insisted that tariffs could have avoided the Great Depression, which is interesting because the Smoot-Hawley tariff is usually understood to have contributed to that global downturn. He also announced new 10 percent tariffs on just about every country in the world, including places that are not even countries, but without including Russia.
The Trump administration is also reportedly asking Europe to keep buying American weapons after defense contractors were spooked by recent European reactions to Trump’s words and actions with Russia versus Ukraine. It might help if he would consider a new Ukraine aid bill, since those are very, very good for US arms sales, but of course Trump must exhaust all other options first.
Repeating one of the primary messages of this website: wars are fundamentally macroeconomic affairs. Wars are won by the bigger alliance — not the bigger army, or the bigger landmass, or the bigger gods. Europe still cannot get their act together and the White House is still not in a uniting mood. However, because Putin’s Russia will never agree to any real peace in Ukraine, no matter how much negotiating leverage Trump surrenders, the relationship can only deteriorate.
Regular readers, especially my premium subscribers, know why I have been expecting this moment to come. They read my argument over the last three months. I enjoy being right, so I am extending the Battle of Shiloh sale into an Easter sale. If you are a free subscriber, don’t be an April Fool! Take this opportunity to save 25 percent on an annual premium subscription.
